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Jo Hammerborg’s Nova Pendant

Danish lighting designer Johannes (Jo) Hammerborg was born in Randers, Denmark in 1920. He trained as a silversmith in Silkeborg and Randers between 1942 and 1944. He went on to attend the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. From 1949 to 1957, he worked as a silversmith for noted Danish silver brand Georg Jensen.

In 1957, Hammerborg became head of design at Danish lighting company Fog & Mørup. He brought with him a strong modern design sensibility, a strategy for a cohesive brand identity, as well as strict new production requirements for all of the brand’s pieces. Hammerborg’s tenure at the company was both artistically and commercially successful. While there, he designed over 60 lamps and pendants and collaborated with several designers, helping adapt their work to meet the brand’s stringent new manufacturing requirements. He was also intimately involved in the brand’s collaborations with porcelain manufacturer Royal Copenhagen and Holmegaard glassworks. Hammerborg’s own lights earned him multiple honors, including a 1965 CICi first prize for Nova and four iF Product Design Awards in 1969 for Tunika, Classic, Diskos and Saturn designs.

He remained at Fog & Mørup until 1980, when he left to establish his own lighting company. Following his departure, the company underwent a series of mergers that ultimately led to its demise.

In 1982, Hammerborg—an avid airborne sports enthusiast—passed away tragically at the age of 62 in a skydiving accident on the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea.

Jo Hammerborg’s Nova Pendant

The Nova Pendant is one of the most instantly recognizable modernist lighting pieces, designed in 1963 by Johannes “Jo” Hammerborg, then head of design at Danish lighting manufacturer Fog & Mørup. One in a series of streamlined, refined lighting pieces produced by Fog & Mørup and driven by Hammerborg’s creative vision in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Nova Lamp stands out for its simple, dynamic form of three angled, graduating tiers in copper, brass, or aluminum. The piece epitomizes 1960s modernist optimism, reflecting a postwar fascination with the burgeoning space age.

Midcentury metallic pendants are increasingly in demand these days for the eye-catching pop that they bring into an interior; combining a still-contemporary minimalist sensibility with a touch of Danish hygge and warmth, the Nova is a prime exemplar. Shortly after Hammerborg left Fog & Mørup in 1980 the company began to falter and was ultimately shut down, meaning that these gems of modernist lighting in Hammerborg’s back catalog are even rarer and more sought after today.

Offering a stricter more minimalist take on the snazzy, angular Nova is Hammerborg’s Equator Lamp, while the Ultra Pendant will appeal to those for whom more (glitz) is more. For other options in Space Age lighting, check out the vintage designs from Lyfa, Granhaga Metallindustri, Nordisk Solar, and Poul Henningsen.

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